| OT: Observations on a couple of Plugins [message #65618] |
Wed, 22 March 2006 07:35  |
Neil
Messages: 1645
Registered: April 2006
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Senior Member |
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Well, now that've got my DAW up & running again, and am back
into mixing mode, I just thought I'd pass the word on a couple
of VST plugin's I've found to be VERY useful...
The first is a free compressor bundle from Buzzroom... here's
the link
http://www.x-buz.com/BuzCompFree.html
The bundle includes stereo & mono versions of each plugin.
My favorite so far is the gran comp multiband - I have a bass
track that needed some compression, but everything else I tried
just wasn't cutting it - they were all smoothing it out "too"
much, so I was losing some of the growl that the track had...
I slapped on the genecomp, ok... then the grancomp, not bad...
tried the gran comp multiband & WHAM! There it was. One of the
presets just nailed it. This one sounds pretty good on electric
guitars, too - the harder settings remind me a bit of the tone
of an 1176.
Another nice thing: these plugins do not seem to be very CPU-
intensive at all, which is always a plus.
The second plugin I want to mention is one that I've brought up
here a couple of times, but for anyone who hasn't yet given it
a shot, it's worth mentioning again... it's "Voxformer" from
Voxengo. Here's the link:
http://www.voxengo.com/product/voxformer/
Now, this one's not free, but it's also not too expensive...
just $59, and there's a demo so you can try before you buy.
The more I use this thing, the more I like it; while it's not
super-intuitive if you want to just load it & start tweaking,
it's got a good number of presets to get you started, and
they're different enough from one another that I'll bet one
will get you in the ballpark, no matter what kind of material
you're working on.
Formerly, I was using the Paris VST EQ, a compressor of some
kind, and the Spitfish de-esser on any given lead vox track...
this thing has replaced that combination, and I've come to like
it's de-esser component more than that of the Spitfish (which I
still think is the best stand-alone de-esser plug).
Start with the "Nice & Transparent" preset for a great overall
vocal setup that maintains the character of the track, or go to
the "Hard Limiting" preset & crank up the Saturation & Presence
a notch or two each for something very reminiscent of
Distressor-type sonics.
Voxengo support is great, too... I needed a re-auth this past
weekend when I was reloading this one & their GlissEQ, so I
sent an e-mail out asking about how to go about that & Aleksey
got back to me personally - same day, on a Saturday.
The only negative thing I can say about Aleksey's plugin's is
that some of them are very CPU-intensive, partly because a lot
of them have a graphic display component, but also, I think if
you listen to the sound quality, you just don't hear any funky
artifacts like I've heard with some plugins - perhaps that kind
of quality of processing takes more cycles to accomplish.
Anyway, go check out the demo of Voxformer & download those free
Buzzcomps!
Neil
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